Meeting, Pt. 1
Kyle just sat in his chair, trying hard to concentrate on his Algebra teacher. The juvenile snow leopard was new in school, and the whole town for that matter, who moved just because his parents thought it would be better for his education, always pushing him to get better grades. However, already a straight A student, he could never completely grasp his parents' train of thought. Kyle played with his pen while his teacher explained and went over class rules and expectations on the typical first day of school. He sighed heavily, clutching his hair as if he wanted to rip it off his scalp in boredom.
Thankfully, however, the class ended a few quick minutes later. The bell rang with its characteristic loud, obnoxious ring as Kyle stuffed his binder in his backpack while the teacher reminded the students to get their parent letters signed.
"First period down, another six to go." He murmured to himself, remembering just how "elated" he was when he was told by his parents that they were moving nearly a month ago. This was his second time in 2 years, it was hard enough making new friends for the first couple of weeks in elementary school, but this was junior high, a microcosm of high school. Kids were still kids but they pretended they were more than that, organizing themselves into stereotypical cliques, and Kyle didn't belong in any.
The snow leopard was cute, handsome, and above average height for his age. He dressed in preppy clothes, but was only interested in what was considered to be "geeky" hobbies such as watching sci-fi, playing World of Warcraft and fiddling with computers in general. He had jet black hair, with an emo hairstyle and horn-rimmed glasses, but he was also lean and athletic as he loved to play tennis. However, he considered himself unattractive and boring, always a pessimist.
He trudged into the next classroom: English, which was bustling with noise, friends talking to each other about what they did over the summer. Kyle took a seat in an empty desk, and set his backpack down by his chair, right behind another snow leopard, but a girl. He thought nothing of it, fully absorbed in staring down at his desk, minding his own business.
"For the fourth time, is Kyle Lee present?" He shot back up. The class was dead silent and everyone was staring at him. "Umm... present." He responded flustered, as he felt his cheeks flush. 'Great way to make a first impression, Kyle. Staring down at your desk like a moron.' He was furious at himself, not hearing the bell or his name being called at least three times.
He looked back around; everything seemed to have gone back to normal, people kept talking as the teacher kept taking attendance. The girl in front of him looked back at him and they caught each other's eye, before she quickly turned around and went back to talk with her friends. Kyle's heart fluttered, she was more beautiful than anyone he had seen ever. The teacher kept taking attendance, "Jacqueline Lo?" The girl in front of him responded with such a sweet voice that made him weak at his knees.
Kyle quickly shook his head, 'No man, she's way outta your league, keep dreaming.' He sighed heavily, just a glimpse of her was more than enough to fulfill the cute girl quota for the rest of his life.
The English teacher, Mrs. Hendricks quieted down the class after taking attendance, and briefly explained class rules and regulations before setting everyone free for the next 30 or 40 minutes of class to do whatever they wanted. "Finally," Kyle said under his breath, "I can catch up on some sleep." He crossed his arms on his desk and rested his head down, but he couldn't fall stop thinking of her. As soon as he put his head down, someone poked him in the head and he peeked up. "Hey, name's Jacqueline Lo, people call me Jackie, and if I'm not mistaken, your name is Kyle." She said with a wide grin on her face.
Kyle quickly sat back up. "Oh, hi - Kyle... Oh yeah that's my name, uh, how do you know..?" Kyle fumbled for words.
She laughed, "Well, I mean the teacher did call it out four times, right?"
"Oh yeah, that's right." He responded, unable to believe that she would actually talk to someone like him.
"Pleased to meet you Kyle." She said as she held out her paw for a friendly shake. Kyle didn't hesitate for a second and shook the hand offered to him, "Same here Jackie."
Jackie went back to chat with her friends. They giggled and talked about how hot or not-so-hot some celebrities were. Kyle didn't hear any of that. He was transfixed. She was perfect; everything about her was perfect. Her personality, looks, voice, everything. She was the whole package, the whole shebang. Jackie was shorter than him, and had black hair just like him, that was longer than shoulder length. She also looked like she was quite athletic, and had a nice figure, not too slim and petite, but there was definitely something there. She also had the same taste in fashion as Kyle did. He thought of the song, "Pink Triangle" by Weezer and hoped that this wasn't the case.
The bell rang again, breaking Kyle's trance. The annoying ring signaled the end of second period. Jackie held out a scrap piece of paper out to Kyle and asked, "You have AIM, right?"
"Uh... yeah, I do." Kyle grabbed the piece of paper, and glanced at it.
"Well, that's my screen name," Jackie said, "we'll talk later. Bye."
She left and Kyle looked at the piece of paper, flabbergasted. It read - jcki310. She had just used leet-speak for her screen name. Was he in heaven? Was this a dream?
The clock read 3:29; the second hand ticked at a pace Kyle thought was painfully slow. A few ticks later, it read 3:30 and the bell rang for the last time of the day. Seventh period was finally over, and so was the first day of school. Kyle packed up and dragged himself out of his science classroom and trudged down the hallway, down a flight of stairs into another hallway and finally out the main entrance of Kennedy Junior High. The day was finally over, which meant he could rush home, relax and shoot some people up in Counter-Strike, and hopefully chat with Jackie.
After Kyle walked all the way home thinking of her, he unlocked and opened the door to his house and slammed the door shut behind him. The house was still stacked high with boxes and was honestly quite messy. It was a lovely 4 bedroom, 2-story house with a large living area that had a pool and a hot tub in the backyard. His parents had fallen in love with it as soon as they saw it and purchased it, as it was one of the few houses with a pool in the neighborhood. Kyle could've cared less, a house was a house. The pool was a nice commodity, but as long as he had his own bedroom he didn't care.
The snow leopard entered his room on the second story and shut the door behind him. The room was already the way he preferred it, plastered with posters of his favorite bands, the McLaren-Mercedes MP4-ZZ Formula 1 livery, and miscellaneous game posters covering a lot of the original beige-colored walls of his room. This was his personal sanctuary. His computer was at one corner, right across his messy bed with heaped up covers. The windows were open and a cool breeze periodically breezed throughout the room. He sat down at his computer and started playing some music out of his speakers as he opened up AIM and typed in 'jcki310' into his buddy list. She was offline.
Kyle's heart sank, and thought, 'What if she just gave me the wrong name just to get my hopes up and then toy with me? What if she is laughing with her friends on how stupid I was to believe I'd get her screen name on the first day? What if...' He asked himself as he started running all these horrible scenarios through his mind.
Kyle tried to shake off his pessimist side. 'Maybe she just has extracurricular activities, or maybe she's just at a friend's house.' He tried thinking positively, but it was hard to shake his "glass half empty" way of thinking. He booted up Steam and loaded Counter-Strike, which would hopefully get his mind off of the subject for at least a while, which worked with mixed results, as he only thought about it during the times between rounds after he died. However, as he was defusing the bomb for the win, the whole screen went black for a second, before minimizing down to the taskbar. Kyle was annoyed until he realized who the culprit was. The flashing window read, "jcki310 says: Hey, what's up?"
Kyle's hopes were reignited, and responded like if he didn't respond fast enough, she would disappear forever. "I was just playing some games, you?" He responded, astounded she was using proper grammar online, like he usually did.
"Oh, I just came back from tennis practice, you?" the reply came back.
Kyle's jaw dropped, now it was already too good to be true. He smacked himself around saying, "This is a dream, wake up! Wake up!" but it was real alright. Kyle thanked the heavens as he kept chatting with Jackie and learned of her MySpace and Facebook pages, learned that she loved Roger Federer and Andy Roddick, tennis, chocolate ice cream, swimming, classic and modern rock, that she played the drums, liked the colors blue and red, and was into cars. He was dumbfounded by how many similarities they had in between. They chatted and chatted until Jackie said, "I have to leave, my parents are telling me to get off the computer."
Kyle responded, "Alright, I guess I'll talk to you tomorrow."
"Alright, bye Kyle, it was fun talking to you."
"Bye Jackie, I had fun too."
"Bye."
"Later." Kyle responded before the system told him that jcki310 had logged off of AIM. Kyle got up and stretched for a second before heading downstairs to grab a glass of orange juice. He walked into the kitchen, where his parents were organizing plates and silverware into cabinets, as he gave them a quick rerun of "exciting" day of school, sans the part about the very special girl he met in English class. Kyle quickly drank the orange juice and quickly headed back upstairs under the pretext of homework and sleep.
This young snow leopard was elated; he had never felt this way about a girl this way before. Was this what people called love?